Watermarking Photos For Free – Tips For Teen Bloggers

I noticed recently that other websites were taking pictures from here and using them on their sites. Some would kindly link back to TeensGotCents and give us credit for the picture. Of course there are those few who just don’t bother. Which didn’t make me mad (okay, a little) – but did make me want to make it a little more difficult on them! My friend Allie – over at Simply St. Augustine – uses a watermark on all of her pictures which clearly lets people know that it’s HER picture and where it was taken from. I wanted to replicate that here, but couldn’t figure out how to do it as Eva and I do not have any type of photo editing software. The truth is that I have iPhoto and that’s it and there is no budget for making any purchases at this point. Watermarking photos for free was my only option.

Enter my best friend donna of donna ham photography. I asked her if she could help me figure out a way to mark our pictures without spending any money on additional software and she did just that! She sent me the info and gave me an in person tutorial when I visited her recently.

Here are the steps we followed to successfully watermark photos for free in iPhoto:

Download iBorder FX

They have a version for Aperture and iPhoto. It’s free!

Select A Picture in iPhoto

Make whatever edits that you want now. I usually don’t make many changes here because I don’t really know what I’m doing…

Click File > Export

This opens the BorderFX window.

Select the BorderFX Tab at the top – if it isn’t already selected

Make sure you are on the right tab!

Make Selections On The Image Tab

Image first…

You can see here that I have chosen original size for the dimension of the photo. I have found that if I make a different selection here my pictures get really tiny and do not fit into the border that I have chosen. We like a white frame around our pictures but you can choose any color that looks good on your site. Play around with the settings here and see which border you like best!

Make Selections On The Border Tab

You don’t have to choose a border if you don’t want one.

You can see here that we chose Uniform Borders with a width of 36. Our color is white and has 100% opacity. Again, you can choose all sorts of different borders. We just wanted something simple and plain.

Place The Watermark

Now you can drag the text box around until you find where you want the watermark to appear…

I’m guessing that you don’t want the mark in the center of the picture. Just grab it and move it where you want it… When you click on the box next to Text Color you can choose the color as well as the opacity. We went with 75% because we liked the way that it looked.

You can choose the opacity right here…

Presets!

Just click on the drop down menu next to the settings icon and choose ‘Save as New Preset’.

You only have to do all of this once!

The preset feature makes all of this worth it. It seems like there are 57 steps to this process. But if you have things just the way you want them then you can save the settings and name your Preset. Next time you want to mark a photo it is a one click process. Add the mark, reposition it on the photo and you are done!

Almost done!

At this point you just need to click the blue export button at the bottom and save the new file. And your finished product will look good and have your copyright and website address on it in case anyone decides to ‘borrow’ it…

One of my favorite snapshots of Eva and her brother.

What are best practices when it comes to using pictures from Google Images or from another website? At the very least you need to link back to the site and give them credit for the photo. Eva and I make the picture itself a clickable link directly back to them. However, we rarely do this anymore. We are more likely to use a free image and credit the photographer who has granted free use of the pic or we contact the site and ask for permission to use a photo. Most bloggers and websites are happy to allow you to use one of their pictures if you ask for permission and correctly link back to their site.

Watermarking photos doesn’t have to be expensive or take forever. It is a great way to remind people that you own your photos and ‘helps’ them to give credit where credit is due.

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Hi guys, I’m Eva!

Welcome to TeensGotCents, my name is Eva Baker and I founded this site when I was sixteen. I'm a complete money nerd and I love helping teens learn how money works. Also, I watch too much Netflix. Although I still have a lot to learn about personal finance I hope you will use my successes and failures to help reach your own goals whether you want to go to college debt free, get a part time job, work on a fun DIY project that will save you money or just read about ways you can learn to manage your money well as a teen. So glad you're here! Read more about my story here.

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